{"id":597167,"date":"2026-09-11T14:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T14:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/597167\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T14:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T14:16:09","slug":"krux-director-tony-vahl-on-post-second-world-war-taboo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/597167\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Krux’ Director Tony Vahl on Post-Second World War Taboo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe \u201cPractical Magic 2\u201d press tour might be taking over the world, but Tony Vahl<\/a>\u2019s impressive feature debut \u201cKrux<\/a>\u201d also finds space for the supernatural.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSet in the final days of the WWII and premiering at TIFF and San Sebasti\u00e1n, it portrays a German village waiting for the inevitable: the arrival of Soviet troops. Some of its inhabitants look for ominous signs and listen to prophecies. Others don\u2019t want to wait for a destiny they believe would be worse than death.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy grandmother was very superstitious. She used to tell me that you shouldn\u2019t hang laundry on New Year\u2019s Eve because someone might then hang themselves. I was really fascinated by this,\u201d Vahl tells\u00a0Variety.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn the film, the priest has his religion. The mayor \u2013 his Nazi cult. People always need something they can hold onto. A belief is such a powerful thing. It can help you \u2013 or it can destroy you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Vahl leaves certain things unsaid \u2013 \u201cI didn\u2019t want to say \u2018Russians\u2019 or limit it to just one nation\u201d \u2013 the fear is real.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s something in the air and you can\u2019t define it,\u201d she says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I was little, I would go to the riverbank with my grandmother. At that time, people didn\u2019t talk much about the war. But my grandmother was different. She told me that in the old days, corpses would float down the river. Then she said: \u2018People would go in the water.\u2019 I didn\u2019t understand what it meant. It sounded like a fairy tale \u2013 and a horror movie. But I remember how it made me feel. It never left me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the Third Reich collapsed, mass suicides claimed the lives of thousands of Germans. For the longest time, nobody talked about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was a taboo. Then, about 10 years ago, Florian Huber wrote about it [in \u2018Promise Me You\u2019ll Shoot Yourself\u2019]. I realized: \u2018Oh, it\u2019s not a unique story. It was happening all over Germany\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the film, starring Jella Haase, Frida-Lovisa Hamann, Clemens Schick and Lukas Miko, mass panic ensues and the unthinkable happens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI would ask myself: \u2018How could parents kill their own children?\u2019 But they really believed that the future would bring nothing good,\u201d says Vahl.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI wanted to find an ethical way to tell this story. If I\u2019m being honest, all my movies are about death, but I didn\u2019t want to exploit it. I wanted to keep certain things in the shadows because our imagination can make things even more terrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tInterestingly enough, Vahl doesn\u2019t care much for war movies.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m not a fan, and we have a lot of them in Germany. I never wanted to make a typical war movie with explosions and soldiers. I studied psychology, so I\u2019m more interested in people\u2019s mentality and how we operate in extreme situations. This film is not a historical lesson, but rather a story about humanity and morality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKeeping this in mind, she set out to uncover lesser-known secrets from that time. Just like the so-called \u201csteel helmet wedding\u201d (pictured) where a helmet stood in for the absent \u2013 or dead \u2013 groom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt really happened, even though there aren\u2019t many photos left,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI have so much respect for history and at the beginning, I focused on that more. But I\u2019m also a big genre fan and yes, I like having some secrets. These characters have no backstories, and things just keep getting darker, like a spiral.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m a big Steve McQueen fan and he used to talk about \u2018body cinema\u2019. You feel it in your gut. That was my main approach, too. I know this movie isn\u2019t easy to watch, but I wanted to leave people with the same feeling I had after \u2018Hunger,\u2019 \u2018White Ribbon\u2019 or even \u2018The Zone of Interest<\/a>.\u2019 You are asking yourself: \u2018What is this film doing to me\u2019?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFittingly enough, \u201cThe Zone of Interest\u201d<\/a> producer Ewa Puszczy\u0144ska is also behind \u201cKrux\u201d \u2013 as are Martina Haubrich, Claudia Schr\u00f6ter and Peter Hartwig. A Cala Filmproduktion, Extreme Emotions and Kineo Film production, it\u2019s sold by Global Constellation.<\/p>\n

\n\tVahl still did her research, however. For over a year.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was always in the library, but it wasn\u2019t easy to find information about that time. Then, I read Ian Kershaw\u2019s \u2018The End: Hitler\u2019s Germany, 1944 \u2013 45\u2019 and he described the Germans as \u2018dead inside\u2019,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey didn\u2019t question these things because they were brainwashed. There was this death cult, this hero cult. They had odd words like\u00a0kadavergehorsam, which means \u2018cadaver-like obedience\u2019. The government, or the state, trained people to be without will, without a body, and without the freedom to ask questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe adds: \u201cThis is what happens in dictatorships. For some people, it\u2019s easier \u2013 at least they have someone to follow. They need this kind of leadership. It happens again and again, and now we have the same situation in Germany.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tJust before the interview, the far-right party AfD [Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland] won big in German regional election.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt makes me really nervous,\u201d she admits.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s a nice quote from Ingeborg Bachmann: \u2018History teaches but has no pupils\u2019.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The \u201cPractical Magic 2\u201d press tour might be taking over the world, but Tony Vahl\u2019s impressive feature debut…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,294312,409,111,139,69,33073,294313,294314,1998],"class_list":["post-597167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-krux","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-san-sebastiu00e1n-film-festival","tag-the-zone-of-interest","tag-tony-vahl","tag-toronto-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}